The apple of Mai's eye...

I'm not sure how the conversation started, but it started with M.  M & K were staying with us for the first week and a bit in July and over some fine dinners and some "crazy" wines we got to talking about apple tarts.  Specifically, M started talking about apple tarts.  The object of her wildest apple tart fantasies consisted of apples, cooked to perfection whereby the texture remains fresh-tasting, tender with a subtle chew, atop a shortcrust pastry.  And very specifically NO GLAZE.  The discussion soon turned to whether this magic combo existed.  Was it just a figment of her extremely particular food expectations?  There was one obvious way to settle this: Paris-wide apple tart search.

The object was to find something that met what M had envisioned under 4 euros. The following days were met with intense research.  M tapped into the Japanese-paris foodies network.  K stayed cool, resting on a tip-off from a local friend, while P and I scoured a growing repertoire of impressive bakeries that we'd tried.  4 patisseries hardly qualifies as "paris-wide", but it did come to a showdown between patisseries from the left bank vs the right.  

You can see that the entry on the bottom right didn't exactly match the criteria of the others.  It hailed from the famous bakery Poilâne, and rather than slices of apples on a flat flaky crust/shell, it contained chunks of apple in a yeasty, bread-like pocket.  M & K knew they might break some rules with that entry, but they couldn't resist. Besides we're a lenient panel, and would you have turned away a sweet little thing like that?  Ranking 1st was the tart pictured top right (a layer of applesauce, which at first seemed bizarre, gave it a tangy apple-y edge), and descended in order going clockwise.  There was room for debate between the 2nd & 3rd.  The funny thing was that none of them met the specific elements that M had set her heart on, but none of us were about to blow the whistle on this party of caramelized apples and buttery, flaky bases.

Note that July was not exactly the season for apple tarts.  Some of the fine bakeries that we considered carried a "seasonal" tart instead, which was almost always apricot at the time.  

This treat came from the same place as the winning apple tart, on the corner of a quiet street behind Sacre Coeur.  It was called a "tulipe aux framboise", and consisted of a waffle-cone shell, coated with chocolate on the inside and filled with a raspberry cream and topped with fresh raspberries.  Tulipe cookies are traditionally a light thin cookie that is baked flat, but then put into a brioche mold while it's still warm and pliable.  They're often served with whipped cream and fruit, kind of like the version we had.